Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

Apologies to all for not having updated in a month. I suck. Hopefully the contents of this post will be worthwhile enough for you to keep reading my blog. For those of you who don’t know, Banksy (famous UK graffiti artist) recently opened his first installation in NYC. It’s located at 89 7th Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street in the West Village for anyone who plans on visiting (which you should). It’s called The Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill and consists of odd animatronic exhibits such as chicken nuggets dipping themselves in sauce while the mother hen looks on. My favorite is what appears to be a leopard, but is actually just a cleverly draped fur coat. Watch the video and check out the pictures after the fold.

Ever want to see really cool people in their elements? Well now you can at The Selby. My sister sent me this site a few days ago and I haven’t stopped looking at it. It’s a collection of photographs of creative personalities shot by Todd Selby. He’s amazing with the camera and manages to capture these designers and artists in their homes and studios in a very evocative way, as if you’re there sharing the experience. He’s even shot the “party photo king” aka The Cobrasnake. It’s just an amazing site, check it out. More of my favorites after the fold.

My roommate turned me on to this video after I told him how much I loved 8 1/2, and I have to say, this is one ingenious piece of mashup art. It’s a trailer that features the music from 8 Mile, starring Eminem and footage from Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2. It really captures the similarities between the two films, however culturally different and anachronistic they may be relative to each other. I’d have to say it’s really only worth watching if you’ve seen 8 1/2, but I’m sure that the mind-blowing juxtaposition can be appreciated by everyone. See for yourself.

Apologies for not updating regularly. From now on, I will endeavor to update as daily as possible (and once I get into a rhythm, the posts will pop up at around the same time). That being said, I would love to hear specific input from you readers about what content you like, what you think is mediocre and bad, etc. I would like this blog to be interactive rather than simply me posting things that I arbitrarily think are cool, so please, tell me what you’d like to see in the future, or even submit ideas to me about future posts. Many thanks.

Reverse graffiti is awesome. Basically, reverse graffiti artists make their art by removing dirt, grime, dust etc. that has built up over the years. This can be done with just some water and a clean rag or industrial cleaning material. Because the artists aren’t adding any additional paint, it isn’t considered illegal. Pioneer reverse graffiti artist Moose prefers to call it “clean tagging” or “grime writing” because the association with traditional graffiti carries a heavy social stigma. Personally, I love reverse graffiti because it turns the concept of graffiti upside down and really separates the artistic expression of graffiti from the vandalism. As Moose puts it: “Once you do this, you make people confront whether or not they like people cleaning walls or if they really have a problem with personal expression.” The video above is of a reverse graffiti artist in Sao Paolo who made a mural of skulls on the insides of tunnels to remind drivers of how toxic their emissions are. More examples of reverse graffiti and links to read more after the fold.